Random Acts of Kindness sports the slogan “Kindness starts with one,” on its website.

The group also dubbed Feb. 11-18 as Random Acts of Kindness week for 2018. But students at Sublimity elementary and middle schools got a jump on the act.

During the week of Jan. 28-Feb. 2, Brenna Smith’s second-grade class engaged in a “kindness rocks” theme, which culminated with the young students joining older, seventh-grade students and leaving inspiring pebbles of their production around town for people to find.

During the week of Jan. 28-Feb. 2, second and seventh-grade Sublimity students teamed up on an inspiring "kindness rocks" projects.(Photo: Special to the Stayton Mail | Brenna Smith)

Sublimity Middle School Office Manager Brandi Elmer said students spent much of the week painting rocks with inspiring messages, then on Friday they randomly placed them out in the community.

Smith said each day had a different focus in class, from kindness to self, kindness to classmates, kindness to your school, and finally, kindness to the community.

“The culminating project was to create ‘kindness rocks,’ to disperse throughout the community,” Smith noted. “For the project, the second graders collaborated with seventh graders from Scott Hawkins' class to both paint and disperse the rocks.

“The project was meant to bring joy and encouragement to the community, but it also brought excitement and energy to the students, as they imagined who might find their rock and how that would influence them,” she added.

The Sublimity project mirrors the worldwide Kindness Rocks Project, which encourages the painting of small, hand-sized stones with inspirational messages and leaving them in random places. Finders may keep the rocks or pass them along to a friend or leave them for another to find randomly and be inspired.